Cat and Mouse
by AidanPryde
Summary: While running recon in the Draconis Combine, Daemon Kane of the Armored Cavalry Elite ACE runs into more than he bargained for. Rated PG-13 for language


Disclaimer: I do not own Battletech/Mechwarrior, Wizkids, Microsoft/FASA, and whatnot do… Actually, I don't even own this story. I have been allowed to repost it here by its author and my compatriot, "Fenris Wulf"

"CAT MOUSE"

Damon Kane looked over the HUD display on his control panel and didn't like what he was seeing.

Three sharp red pinpoints, indicated the Draconis Combine Battlemechs that hunted him. He marked a Centurion, a Blackhawk, and an Axeman. He switched off the HUD. The lowlight of the early morning crept through the Armored glass of the cockpit. He felt exposed as he felt the gyros slow, and the mech complete its shutdown process...

The soft metallic whine of the fading fusion engines cooling system fans clicked off, and he was left in a deafening silence. The Thor was powered down completely. He took off his gloves and repositioned his cooling vest, still clammy, even with the recent withdrawal of the cooling liquid that kept him from roasting alive in a seventy-ton furnace with legs.

His mind raced as it laid out a desperate plan for victory.

Damon watched the light become brighter on the horizon. It seemed nature would force his hand. He uttered a small request to no one that his death would come quickly at the end of an ordinance shell, and not burned alive in the cockpit he occupied. The young Mechwarrior lifted the high-powered binoculars to his eyes again. The ancient technology employed on the Terran battlefields of old, still was as useful today as it was then. He switched the mil-spec field glasses he held to his eyes to double the magnification, and peered through the glass of his cockpit into the low light of the morning. He could see the deep green glow of the lowlight visual HUD's the enemy was using to track him. They would have figured out that he must have powered down. They would try and spot his silhouette in the darkness, but they would not find him, not yet. His Thor knelt in the tall trees of one of the many copses that dotted this barren swampy land. Damon would wait. He knew that the brightening light of the dawn was fast approaching, and soon they would be forced to turn off the low light amplification and wait the precious seconds for their eyes to adjust to the low light of dawn. It would go dim slowly and allow the eyes to adjust, easing the night-blindness of those inside.

He calculated the time in his head, as he watched through the pale of first light...

"Three seconds for the Light amplification to dim... Three to five seconds for their eyes to adjust, two to three seconds for the tactical HUD lights to come up to day time illumination levels..."

"...8 or 9 seconds... Not a lot of time...but maybe enough..." He said as he slipped the restraining harness off his shoulders. He opened the vent hatch directly above his command couch, and let the canned air of his cockpit vent out with a soft hissing. He pulled from a small ammo canister a large barreled plasma flare-gun. Normally used to signal those searching for you, he hoped it would buy him the time he needed to gain the upper hand on his little search party.

Damon stuck his head and shoulders through the vent hatch. His right foot rested upon the switch he would use to begin his cold start sequence, his left hand held his Neuro-helmet at the breaking point of it's cable connections. This would get their attention, he thought, He then closed his eyes...

Bang! Shhshshshshsssssssssss...

The flare shot out of the 3 inch bore with a lot more force than he had expected. He had opened his eyes at the last second and out of instinct, and he caught a glimpse of the tail of the flare, spotting his vision.

"Damn! Not good, not good!"

He could still see the flare making its slow lazy arc toward the trio of mechs. He slapped on his Neuro-Helmet, as he dropped into the command couch, kicking the cold start switch with his foot...no good! His hand shot forward and flipped the switch again, and this time the engine roared to life! He fumbled to strap on his restraining harness, and his mech surged into battle.

"Damn, damn, damn!"

Pop! Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

The Plasma Flare ignited! The Drac Centurion immediately turned away from the flare and stumbled a bit...he could imagine the pilot looking at this little pinpoint of light, and then the lowlight amplification would have magnified the flash of the exploding flare for a split second before the amplifying system controls realized it was blinding the pilot and shut down the system...too late, the pilot would be temporarily blinded, like a Tri-Vid camera Flash inches from your eyes...spotty blindness...

"The Worst kind." He smirked and opened fire on the stumbling Centurion.

He had no time to worry if the others were affected; the Centurion was his only concern.

Raising his mech's arms and not waiting for the targeting computer to lock on, he fired the AC10 at its maximum rate, while the modified PPC exploded and shot forth its superheated plasma. The LRM 20 fired directly at the crippled Centurion and its temporarily blinded pilot...the LRMs blasted wildly around the mech, a lack of target tracking causing them to be no more than "dumb projectiles," striking the mech in ones and twos. Again the AC 10 blasted shrapnel and armor from the torso of the centurion...and the PPC flared against the already superheated armor. The targeting computer locked onto the wounded mech a split second before the LRM salvo fired again. Twenty missiles homed in on the Centurion. Struggling to keep the mech upright, the pilot could do nothing but watch as the missiles struck the Mech's center torso. The multiple impacts forced the enemy mech further and further back. Then suddenly the mech seemed to be struck by an invisible physical blow. The torso turned hard to the left, and Damon knew the Gyro had jammed. The Centurion fell backwards and down a small out of sight...its medium lasers still stabbing red coherent light into the air above it and the Autocannon blasting rocky terrain with errant shells as it fell.

"One down!"

He had no time to celebrate. Already the other mechwarriors were firing on him! Laser fire and ordinance were smashing into his Thor at an alarming rate.

His damage monitor flared to life, Left shoulder hits, right hip and left leg showing damage from the Blackhawk's SRM packs, and Medium lasers, on his right side... he heard and felt the tell-tale sound of laser fire scorching his armor.

More damage from the Axeman on his left, its medium lasers slicing into the Thor's armored hide. The damage was not too bad, but any damage in a two on one fight was bad news. Launching his mech forward, and slamming the pedals at his feet to the floor, the Thor's Jump Jets roared to life. The fiery exhaust sent superheated rock and rubble into a cloud around his Mech's feet. His high arcing jump took him well over the two Dragon's Fury mechs.

He tried desperately to fire downward using his targeting cameras, but the shots went wild, causing only slight damage to the Blackhawk. As soon as his mech touched solid ground, he revved the Matsu-Hitoshi XL custom engine to high, and forced his Thor into a 90 kph run. The cockpit became and instant inferno, and in the seconds before the cooling vest filled with refrigerant, the heat made his head swim.

He rounded a small copse of trees and temporarily put an obstacle between himself and the hunters, but not for long. He muttered a curse, as he saw the silhouette of the Blackhawk, above the trees.

The Drac Blackhawk had engaged its jump jets and gave chase. He knew the Axeman would have to go the long way around and thus evening the odds for a few seconds... but sometimes that is enough.

He turned and waited the few precious seconds needed for the targeting computer to issue the sweet tone of a solid missile-lock. When the high-pitched whine sounded, 20 rockets flared out form the shoulder mounted missile pack, once, twice! Heat spiked in his cockpit, klaxons sounded signaling an overheat warning, but he paid it no mind and voided his coolant tanks...kill or be killed!

The Blackhawk pilot must have thought the same. Instead of adjusting it's flight path to avoid the missiles, it fired off ECM chaff, and it's own armament. Medium Pulse Lasers scored hits all over Damon's Mech. Damage indicators rang out that hit were scored on the torso, legs, and shoulder! Suddenly an explosion rocked the Thor and sent him rattling around in the cockpit like a marble in a tin cup.

Highly explosive warheads exploded out of the CASE system, grinding the Gyros as the mech was thrown off balance. Damon's hand slipped off the sweat soaked controls, and the off center gyro sent a deep shudder through the mech as the online systems struggled to maintain balance. Damon looked up just in time to see the Blackhawk's pilot struggle to control the mech as the missile salvo blasted into the enemy mech.

Trying to veer left and lessen the damage to the Blackhawk from the incoming missiles, the pilot pulled back and the double salvos from the now destroyed LRM 20 seemed to give it their all, smashing into the hip joint and legs on the right hand side of the smaller mech. Explosions rocked the in flight war-machine. When it landed, Damon watched through his H.U.D. as the Blackhawk crashed into the earth, jump jets shutting off seconds before impact, and the left leg was sheared off at the hip joint. Damon let off a loud yell...

"Oh Yeah!"

The jagged end of the severed leg's superstructure crushed into the side of the cockpit flipping the Blackhawk's torso and cockpit over, and landing it hard upon the rocky ground below.

That particular Drac would live to fight another day...but not in that mech...

"One Left." But this one was undamaged...with that thought Damon looked at his Systems Damage report...LRM gone, Armor shredded to the Myomer fibers on his..."COLLISION WARNING! COLLISION WARNING!" he automated computer voice sounded through the cockpit.

Damon tore his eyes from the extensive damage readout in time to watch as the Axeman hammered into him. An impossibly loud groan sounded through the core of his being, as a 5 ton Depleted uranium Hatchet descended upon the shoulder joint of his already crippled mech! He knew the Thor's arm was now lying at its feet.

Damon saw he had no room to fire his remaining PPC, without cooking himself, so the Thor's Medium Lasers lashed out in a futilely scorching the armor on the Axeman, and not much else. He brought the right arm of the Thor upward, thrusting the mech's forearm forward to try and block the next blow. The Axeman's pilot brought the axe down again, and again, and the Thor's arm was severed at the elbow. A shower of sparks cascaded over the cockpit's armored glass casing. Damon knew this fight was over. He struggled to hit his com-switch!

The Axeman continued to hammer his mech with Lasers, and the core shielding failed. The fusion engine went critical faster than Damon had ever experienced, as he struggled to fire the medium lasers again, but the controls were fused. The computers damage system sounded again, "WARNING: DAMAGE CRITICAL!" This was it he thought. Without warning he was thrown back into the command couch as the explosive bolts on his cockpit canopy blew, and the engines on the automatic ejection system propelled his escape enclosure away from the disable mech. His eyes watered, and through blurred vision he saw the Axeman raise the blade for the final stroke. Then he was staring at the sky, and a canopy of a parachute. He closed his eyes, weary from the adrenaline rush of battle, and let himself float gently to the ground.

Once on the ground, Damon pulled himself free of the restraining harness, and slipped from the command couch. He pulled the pistol and survival-pack from the command couch's ejection locker, and pulled his emergency COMSAT Rescue Beacon, and set it to repeat...

"ACE Command, ACE Command! This is Recon 1... I am dismounted, and on the run. Draconis Combine engaged, 2 Mechs downed, Recon 1 Mech is a total loss. Will stand by for extraction at NAV point gamma."

He threw the COMSAT Rescue Beacon into the swamp as far as he could, and broke into a run for the nearest tree line. He wasn't sure where he was, but he did know one thing...

"Two Mech's down, and one to go..."


End file.
